Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Review: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. Why? Let me tell you why.

Story: This game has one of the best stories in any game (ever). It was written by the Creator of the original Prince of Persia game (made back in 1989) Jordan Mechner, who also wrote what may be the best adventure game ever made The Last Express (1997). Jordan weaves the complicated narrative into a story that is exciting, romantic, and actually intriguing and involving. The characters are interesting and complex and the hero is far more interesting then most video game heroes (not you're typical one-liner spewing space marine).

Sound: The sound design in this game is excellent. The voice acting is very good for the most part. But, what makes the sound design really remarkable is the excellent soundtrack by Stuart Chatwood. He skillfully mixes traditional Middle Eastern music with electric guitar and drums and some excellent vocals. The music reminded me of the wonderful score for Gladiator (2000).

Graphics and Animation: The graphics in Sands of Time are breathtaking! The environments and characters are amazingly detailed and rendered. So much attention to detail on every character and area. And best of all the videos in the game are absolutely stunning, at first glance you will think you are watching a live-action Hollywood movie. The Prince is animated very well and the game manages to make all of his very acrobatic moves look real. They developers also gave him and the other characters very realistic facial animations.

Game play: And most importantly of all the game play, all those other attributes don't really matter if the game isn't fun, and this game is most definitely fun! Most of the game play consists of getting from one place to another in the giant palace that the entire game takes place in. The fun part is how you get there. The prince is some what of a Middle Eastern ninja in the way that he can run along and up walls. The game isn't to big on traditional puzzles, in Sands of Time the environments are the puzzles. The most flawed part of the game is easily the combat, it starts out great, with you being able to pull of all sorts of moves like jumping over an enemies head and slashing them in the back, however as the game progresses the enemies begin to be able to block all the interesting attacks and thus you are forced to use only a few different moves. This is a minor complaint considering how good the rest of the game is.

NOTE ABOUT DIFFERENT VERSIONS: The Xbox version of the game is the best all things considered. If you have any of the three consoles (PS2, Xbox or Gamecube) I recommend that you buy it for one them. However, if you only have a PC don't deny yourself this fantastic game.

Overall: The game is an excellent, well written, amazing looking, involving and entertaining experience. I absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys games. 5 out of 5.

In this game you play as the Prince.... The Prince Of Persia ( his name is never revealed ) an athletic fighter new to the battlefield and must undo a mistake that would cost everyone their lives. He accidentally let the sands of time out of a giant mysterious hourglass after being tricked by the evil Viser to do so. Now he only has the help from a mystical dagger called the dagger of time and one of his palaces captured servants , Farah . He must learn to work together with her and use the dagger to his advantage but can he trust Farah who's home land was sacked by his only a few days earlier.....this game brings action/adventure/puzzle solving to a new level , not to mention a fantastic storyline , this game wasn't game of the year for nothing !

I wanted to persist with this first entry in the modern Prince of Persia series, but I found in each session I dedicated to the game that the negatives outweighed the positives. The platforming, perhaps the most defining characteristic of Prince of Persia, is enjoyable all these years after The Sands of Time's release.

You'll spend at least half of your in-game time platforming, and so it's great to see that this feature has aged well. That isn't to call it easy, however. This game is surprisingly punishing in fall damage; you'd probably expect the Prince to survive larger drops than a GTA character... and you'd be wrong! I assume the developer's intention was to ensure the player took no shortcuts and completed the levels as intended. It's frustrating, but workable.

If only the combat had aged like the platforming. The Sands of Time's enemies appear out of thin air as in Final Fantasy, arriving in wave after wave with no indication ever given as to how much longer a battle will remain. When the first three enemies appeared in the most recent area I played through, I had no idea whether I'd be facing a further three, or six, or twenty. Water fountains (the game's healing stations) are generally at hand, but good luck disengaging from the combat system's auto-lock and being able to actually use them.

The final feature I'd like to draw attention to is the ability to rewind in-game. While limited by how much sand you've collected (sand serves as a kind of action-point), being able to backtrack after a fatal misstep is a huge boon to the player. Perhaps unintentionally, the rewind feature helps in compensating for the The Sands of Time's poorly-aged qualities. For example, I often attempted to jump onto a pillar or platform that wasn't, in fact, grippable. This would invariably prove fatal.

Trying to be objective, there are probably more positives than negatives in playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in 2022. Note at the start of my review, I said that the negatives *outweighed* the positives. The combat is so detrimental to my enjoyment of the game, I'm willing to set it aside entirely and forego the many moments of fun platforming, puzzle-cracking and exploration that I'm sure would await.

If I made one bad choice in my life it's that I didn't buy this game sooner. Indeed, in the end I didn't buy it at all, instead I just borrowed it off my sis about a year ago. She never got it back.

The game is absolutely flawless in it's design. The story follows the Prince of err... you know, who has invaded the grand palace of his rival in search of the ultimate treasure: the Dagger of Time, locked away inside the treasure vault of the city. The Prince retrieves it for his father, and the story leads on from there.

This opening scene serves as the 'turorial' level, and teaches you all the basics you'll need to advance. And it also succeeds in drawing you completely into the Prince's tale. Controlling him as he dangles from precarious ledges manoeuvring his way around the massive architecture is a sight in itself away from the amazing graphics. HDR lighting is used to great effect, shining through the windows of dusty corridors or illuminating the sky in a burning sunrise. Animation is amazing throughout, the Prince diving off ledges and running along walls with grace.

Yes, I said running along walls. While the idea of using the environment to your advantage has been around for a while, POP does it completely differently. The game is split into two different gameplay elements, as the areas you face become more like logic puzzles as you try to figure out'How would I reach that distant ledge?' or 'How do I get to that switch while avoiding the traps?' Seeing your plan fall into action is immensely satisfying. And an early mishap by the Prince sees the Maharajah's defence system come alive, adding a new twist to puzzles.

Combat is the other main gameplay element, and while it can be quite repetitive, it is just as acrobatic as the environment puzzles. Fights in this aren't just a case of tearing your way through enemy after enemy. Battles also have to have some thought put into them, as some enemies use different weapons and can move faster, and can block different attacks and that. The dagger can be used in fights to give you the advantage, like freezing the enemy to the spot or to slow time down giving aiding you to see oncoming attacks. You can also reverse time, so if you suffered an incapacitating attack or fell into the pit of spikes accidentally you can simply reverse time and try again. It is a fantastic gameplay mechanic as it cannot be used that often so you'll find yourself conserving your Sand Tanks for tougher puzzles. This game really does play like a breath of fresh air.

Overall it suffers in the same area that so many games fall down upon today, and that is that it just doesn't last long enough, although that is acceptable considering the emotional depth of the story, and that fights can be quite irritating when you are ganged up upon by several enemies. There's also not much potential for replay value, apart from to live the experience over again. But the main thing is that this still stands today as an amazing experience against it's two sequels. And you can have forgotten everything about it when you go to play it again(and trust me, you will). Overall this game should be played by everyone, no matter whether they play games or not.

Looks: 9 Sounds: 9 Plays: 10 Lasts:8 Overall 10/10

This accomplishes two things: It reinvigorates the excitement of the best of these, after the less-than-stellar "3D". And it succeeds in doing what that one intended to: bringing them into the third dimension, maintaining the fun and smarts, and even updating it some. Don't get me wrong... they had the right intentions. They may have lacked the tools and technology, and there was an important lesson that this one proves well: You don't need to make the follow-up a carbon-copy(to the extent you can, anyway) to not stray too far, the key is to stay true to the feel. At its core, this is an upgraded Prince of Persia, by which I'm referring to the original that started the franchise. This is faster and more dynamic than the previous ones. It is also, in ways, bigger. They fit in quite a bit, without this being overly long(it took me around 12 hours). The amount of enemies that you fight through all the first three are reached and surpassed not very far into this. The majority of the battles are multi-combat. That's one of the numerous places where this shines: The fighting system. It's amazing, speedy and efficient, and available right at your fingertips. That goes for the acrobatics, as well. While you can move like lightning, and the functions respond the same as that, the swordplay(this guy is kick-ass, he has exceptional skills, and he's got defending himself *down*) and tasks are still the combination of thrilling and demanding that they should be in this series. Let me tell you right now: If you do not have patience that is almost unlimited, finger coordination and reflexes like a cat(this takes longer strides of the latter two, on a regular basis, and split-second timing en masse), this is probably too much. It can be mighty frustrating. This Prince can run across and up walls(I don't believe this is the first game to utilize those two from The Matrix, but it's one of the ones that did it with the most luck), but he's still the same where it counts(...and he continues to go unnamed). The puzzles are intuitive and cool brain-teasers. There aren't too many of them, the large part of this is navigating, the fencing second. It all evens out well, I was never tired of any of it. The plot is magnificent and interesting, and goes somewhere new(thank goodness... how often do you need to have someone else cast you out, typically straight into a dungeon, attempting to marry your princess, before trying something else out?)... just for the record, I don't see much relation between this and the earlier entries, as far as this goes. The concept is rather well-thought out, and also helps supply you with a couple of powers at your disposal. The idea of time is explored. The camera is fantastic, and in addition to the regular one that you can turn and zoom somewhat, you have a first-person one that you can use provided you're standing still, and the panoramic angle which can aid, as well as put in perspective where you currently are. These are all great, and the only negative to this is the fortunately relatively rare occasions where the... let's call it "course correcting", happens. You do need to work with the way the directions change when the view does, which is something you won't always see coming. This only takes you through one overall location, basically, the plenty of areas of that, and all the enemies, whilst all done well and using sufficiently different attacks to be entertaining to face, are essentially variations on the same type. That isn't necessarily bad, it depends on what one wants from this. I would say it all comes together well and the choice can be argued as the right one. The difficulty is fairly high, and there are no settings for it, save for perhaps making the Tutorials(letting you know how to do the things that Mr. P. is capable of, as they come up) be active or not. It does start out soft. The graphics are astonishing. A few cut-scenes are CGI, and simply gorgeous, however, all others are in-engine, and this doesn't hurt them at all. This allows for remarkably articulated and smooth facial and body animation, and there's not a thing in this that doesn't look excellent. The lighting is beyond reproach. The realistic water and dust effects are impeccably well-done. This has next to no bugs or glitches. Saving takes place at checkpoints, with a number of "main" ones, where you choose to, and can return to that spot, and some "auto" ones, where you lose the progress if you quit. The AI is nice, programmed well. Replayability is based on personal preference, there is no High Score table, I don't know of anything that you get by going back to this, other than the experience. Storytelling is nice, you get "flashes" and some narration(that makes the whole thing come together well). The voice acting is spot-on. Sound in general is another strength of this. The music goes towards rock, without forgetting the beautiful Persian-style score. The characters are well-written, if arguably not the deepest ever seen. The dialog tends to be clever and well-delivered, and certainly all goes for being both. The level design is unbelievably well-done. This does have little in the way of Bosses to defeat, but they are awesome. As far as censor-worthy material goes... this can be enjoyed by any teen, and there's not exactly a ton keeping it from being OK from even younger audiences. There's barely any blood, no gore(compare this to the '89 version, and The Shadow and the Flame, for example). The nudity, however, well, there's technically none, but they sure go as close as humanly possible. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys a challenge, in the form of an intense(note: Not as a result of violence), thoroughly well-done and through and through expertly put together adventure action title. 10/10